So tell me: West and Wewaxation

My parents are semi-retired. They visit their grown children when they can, and try to combine these trips with very specialized iteneraries. For instance, they made a tour of exhibitions of the work of their favorite artist, Charles Burchfield

(The title of this particular piece is “Sun Emerging,” but, like most of Burchfield’s work, it ought to be called “Damn!” or “Wowza!” or “Help!”)

And a few years ago, they visited Lost Cove, Tennessee, of Walker Percy fame. We also got a postcard from a full-scale reproduction of Moses’ tabernacle, which the Mennonites built in Lancaster, PA, for some reason.

My parents take pictures at various glitzy tourist traps:

and their photo albums on Facebook have titles like: “Fungus”; “Lichen”; “More lichen. We like lichen.” My mother’s description of one outing with my father was as follows:

What he didn’t mention was that I was scared for him because his sense of balance was off since the spinal cord tumor, car accidents, and several surgeries, and I didn’t think the narrow edges of cliffs and stone bridges with no handrails were a good place for him to be. I even had to bargain with him to get him to agree to use one of the tree branches I found for a walking stick. At age 66! You can’t tell a man anything. I kept thinking, between Hail Marys, “I’ll have to arrange to have his body shipped back home, and then drive back from Tennessee all by myself–and the car key was locked in the trunk!

Ahh, west and wewaxation at wast. I don’t know if this is how they pictured their retirement (or even whether they expected to have one at all).

for our own retirement. There is also some talk of living in either a yurt or something made of adobe, but I forget why. I think we also somehow plan to live in Greece or the outskirts of Rome, and one of us is going to have to learn how to play the guitar finally, or at least the harmonica. It will sound good to us, despite our age and palsy, because we will be pretty drunk.

So tell me: what are your retirement plans? If you could do anything at all, I mean? Or, if you are already retired, is it working out the way you hoped?

A yurt sounds pretty good to me right now – and I’m pretty sure we are still decades away from retirement. Just think how quickly you could clean house!

My husband and I have fallen in love with the Texas Valley (down at the border, McAllen, Pharr, Mission, etc.). We dream of retiring there – flip flops all year long, never putting on a coat again, all the avocados we can eat, and staying buzzed on margaritas and full on Tex Mex for the duration.

Either that or build a little hobby farm right here on the Oklahoma plains. Goats and chickens and all that. That’s actually only my retirement dream – hubby thinks I’m nuts. So here’s to widowhood! (KIDDING.)

Thoughts of retirement consumes my husband, who longs for it the way people long to win the lottery. Meanwhile, my father, at age 65, seems horrified at the prospect, and has said on more than one occasion that he’ll be found dead in his office chair someday. Retirement is a real lens into how you view your everyday life, I think.

For me, barring money woes, I would like to live near my children and be a part of my grandchildren’s lives. I’d like to be outdoors in the sunshine a lot, I’d like to cook and eat leisurely meals, I’d like to be in a boat club and row on the Sound. I’d like a chance to spend time w someone who relishes life and new experiences. And every single day, I think I’ll start w scrambled eggs, a bloody Mary, and toasted buttered country bread.

Retiring to our country/beachside estate sounds like a great retirement to me. We’d also have to buy a motorhome to road trip and see the country. That and to drive to CA where the liquor is half the price of Washington state.

First, though, we need to acquire said estate and bury enough cash in the front yard on which to live on into our golden years.

Since I’m pretty sure that by the time we’re retired, I’ll be in menopause, we’re planning on lots and lots of ‘every day, any time of day’, to quote Creighton.
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Can you tell we’re in the depths of avoiding and crazy, irregular cycles?

I think about this all the time. My retirement plan is a cabin half-way up a mountain somewhere with no machines or technology. Outhouse, well, oil lamps, wood stove, etc. And a generator to power my computer and wireless modem.

The Official Painfully Obvious Statement

I am a freelance writer. This here is my personal blog. What appears here is my opinion and my responsibility, and is not the opinion or responsibility of the National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, Catholic Digest or any other publication that publishes my work.

Le sigh.

Leaving the house, little two-legs? Not without your PANTS PASS!

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